chinacat
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AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,426
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Post by chinacat on Mar 13, 2021 5:50:27 GMT -8
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Dave
Member
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,087
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Post by Dave on Mar 13, 2021 9:24:19 GMT -8
Remember that the time changes tonight.
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4aapl
Moderator
Posts: 3,621
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Post by 4aapl on Mar 13, 2021 11:10:31 GMT -8
While reporting a package that never arrived, and being told I should resell non-returnable things if they show up, I stumbled across Amazon's pricing structure for selling. First there's the selling fee, then a referral fee, and then if you want them to warehouse it and ship it, there's fees on each of those. Add them all up, and you're getting to about 30%. sell.amazon.com/pricing.htmlThe crazy part is the referral fee of 45% on "Amazon Device Accessories". Hmmmm. Tough to imagine that's for an "all's good and fair" type thing. Most "referral fees" there are 15%, with some up to 20%. Cell Phones, and the separate Unlocked Cell Phones, are both at 8%. I wouldn't have guessed that fees were so high. Strange.
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chinacat
Moderator
AAPL Long since 2006
Posts: 4,426
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Post by chinacat on Mar 14, 2021 6:38:08 GMT -8
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4aapl
Moderator
Posts: 3,621
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Post by 4aapl on Mar 14, 2021 10:25:34 GMT -8
Beleaguered!
It's been so long that I hardly remember the word. Thanks Apple!
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Post by Luckychoices on Mar 14, 2021 16:30:25 GMT -8
For those who never got a chance to read this article last month because of the pay wall, it's now available to all. IMO, this quote from Warren Buffett, regarding Tim Cook, is a critical key to Tim's and Apple's success over the last nine years, "Tim may not be able to design a product like Steve, But Tim understands the world to a degree that very, very few CEOs I’ve met over the past 60 years could match.”Apple Is the $2.3 Trillion Fortress That Tim Cook Built By Austin Carr and Mark Gurman Trade war? Pfft. Trump? Please. Antitrust? Zuck’s prob. (Ditto privacy.) Revenue? Endless.Joe Biden had a question for Tim Cook: Why, the then-vice president wanted to know, couldn’t Apple make the iPhone in the U.S.? It was January 2012, during President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and three months after the death of Cook’s predecessor, Steve Jobs. Biden was in Palo Alto for a dinner meeting with Cook and a group of tech leaders that included Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
As everyone at the dinner well knew, the idea of mass-producing an iPhone, or any advanced consumer electronics, in a domestic factory was an exceptionally tall order. The big Asian contract manufacturers, especially Apple Inc.’s main partner, Foxconn, had built city-size factories in China with armies of hundreds of thousands of skilled laborers. None of that scale existed in the U.S. Chinese factory employees generally worked much longer hours, for a fraction of what even the lowest-paid American workers make. “I’m not sure, short of dictatorial practices, that you could ever make that work,” says John Riccitiello, another Silicon Valley executive who witnessed the exchange between Cook and Biden.
Biden’s question put Cook, who’d become Apple’s CEO the previous August, in an awkward position. He was the architect of the strategy to outsource Apple’s production to China, a trend of increasing concern for the Obama administration. But Cook was also, as it turned out, extremely effective at deflecting political pressure. He was certainly more diplomatic than his old boss. Obama once asked Jobs the same question, and Jobs’s characteristically blunt reply landed on the front page of the New York Times: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” Cook, though, was smooth and noncombative—so much so, in fact, that Riccitiello can’t recall exactly what he said to Biden. By the end of that year, Cook announced a small yet politically significant shift. Apple, he said, would start making some Macs in the U.S.
And then, Apple’s reliance on China only grew. You might think its ever-tighter embrace with the country would have put Cook in a worse political position after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 based on a campaign marked by anti-China rhetoric, threats of a trade war, and promises to bring jobs lost to Shenzhen back to American shores—not to mention challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and rising antitrust fervor during his term in office. Strangely, though, Apple thrived under Trump. In August 2018, the company’s market value reached $1 trillion; 24 months later, even as Trump railed on the campaign trail that “these stupid supply chains” in China should move home, it surpassed $2 trillion.
Current and former employees, executives at rival companies, and Washington insiders credit this to Cook’s shrewd management, equally shrewd politicking, and zero reluctance to wield Apple’s market power. “Tim Apple,” as Trump once called him, charmed and cajoled his way into the former president’s good graces, while keeping Beijing happy and finding ways to squeeze more revenue from the iPhone.
Cook’s handling of Trump suggests how Apple, which declined to comment for this story, might approach now-President Biden. Over the next four years his White House will continue pushing to increase U.S. manufacturing and may support congressional scrutiny of potentially anticompetitive practices, egged on by Facebook Inc. and other companies that say Apple exercises too much power. But Cook has been counterpunching, broadening his influence over the mobile phone industry while marketing Apple’s commitment to privacy as the antidote to the practices of social media companies. Moreover, Cook’s unflappable temperament makes him well suited to the polarized political climate. Allies praise his operational skills and diplomatic instincts. “Tim may not be able to design a product like Steve,” says Warren Buffett, who knows Cook well and whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has a stake in Apple worth $111 billion, as of a September filing. “But Tim understands the world to a degree that very, very few CEOs I’ve met over the past 60 years could match.”
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